How Do We Go from One Deal a Month to One Deal a Week?

1. I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Well, welcome everybody to another edition of the Land Geek Nightcap. It's a small crew so far. Uh, we'll see if anybody else shows up. But tonight, Mark Podolsky, we're talking about something every land investor wants to figure out, and that's how to go from doing one deal a month to one deal a week to one deal a day. And, uh, and here's the thing, it's not about working harder, it's about working smarter, right? And getting better at what we're already doing. So Uh, tonight we're talking— we're gonna break down some numbers, uh, we're gonna talk marketing, sales systems, uh, so that you can take your business to the next level. How's that sound?

Amazing, amazing.

And, uh, as always, we have the godfather on the call with us, Mark Podolsky, the Land Geek. Mark, how are you tonight,

dude? Buddy, the Nightcap OG, um, I'm great. I have to tell you It's a little— I feel like a little kid in a little— in a way. Like, you're drinking like a really sophisticated, cool drink, and I'm drinking from a water bottle on a— like a, like a little sippy straw. Like, this is not— this is very emasculating, I will tell you. Put in the chat if you're like just not impressed with me tonight at all. What you watching, dude? But like, you're like drinking like the most interesting man in the world. You know, kind of cool. And I'm drinking like I'm done with

it.

I'm getting a cocktail.

But, uh, but Rick did make fun of me just now. Ice? Because he— I think he's making fun of that, the fact that I'm having a little Maker's Mark on ice, which is not the right way to drink bourbon. But I like it on ice every now and then. So Rick, leave me alone. Um, emasculate Mark, not me. Uh, but anyway,

thank you, Rick. I appreciate it. I, I was like a saw. I was like, like a little lob for Rick, and he took it. It went with you. I respect that.

That's for sure. That is for sure. Don Thrasher's here. Good to see you, Don, bringing the hugs.

Yeah,

the Hollingsworths are here. Doug and Kathy.

Doug and Kathy.

Good to see you guys. Rowena is here. Rowena just graduated flight school. She was at the Dirt Rich Summit a couple weeks ago. Good to see her here as well. Yeah, and, and others as well. Kelly Lazon is here. Candace Jackson, what's up, Candace? We gotta get Candace in the community, Mark. She's right on the edge of doing it. We gotta get her in.

Kelly Lazon, tell Candace what she's missing. Rowena, tell her what she's missing. It's, it is self-serving for us to say it. Like, the community's gotta come up, come with us, Candace.

One of us. I love it. Let's welcome Candace to the community.

Um, after this podcast, Candace is like, I can scale my land business on my own. You guys just told me everything.

Exactly, exactly. And, uh, you know, we're a little short tonight. We're missing Zano. He says he's gonna be a little late, so he might be rolling in here. But, uh, John just must be, you know, homeschooling lots of children or something, or putting lots of children to bed. Most likely, uh,

either

one. Yeah, we'll give him the night off. He's, he's all good.

Yeah.

So, all right, so Mark, let's talk, let's talk scaling the land business. How do we go from one deal a month, which I would say is pretty typical for people that, you know, maybe start out with our flight school program, uh, it's kind of the pace or the velocity at which they go Uh, to, to— let's first shoot for 1 deal a week. And I think the first thing is we just need to start with the math, right?

Yes.

So, Mark, start with the math. How do we go from 1 deal a month to 1 deal a week?

Okay, so we can't sell what we don't own, so we gotta own at least what? 4 properties. So how do we own 4 properties? Well, there's a few levers we're gonna pull. The first lever is we can go to wholesale.thelandgeek.com. We could buy wholesale if you're within the community. If you're not within the community, that's not a good place to go, but you can, you could do that. Land arbitrage as well, which means DudeBuddy has had a bunch of defaults on this property. And he's like, okay, I've been selling this property for $300 down, $300 a month, but you can have it, Candace, for $100 down, $100 a month. And then she would sell it for $300 down, $300 a month, and she'd make the spread on that with only coming up with $100. So she conserves her capital. And then the mailing— we love our mailing. So if we send out 1,000 mailers, we're gonna get a 3 to 5% response rate. And let's say we can close on 1% of those. So what's 1% of $1,000? Do the math.

10 properties.

10 properties. Go buy 10 properties. There you have it. But it might take 6 to 8 weeks to get those 10 properties. So we're pulling our levers and we're getting at least 4 properties. Then what are we doing?

Well, then Then we work on all the other things. But I want to touch on that real quick. Oh, and here, here's John Burnett. Oh, look, he's on a walk. Is he, is he on the phone selling land? No, he's walking. Oh, okay.

Hi, John. Oh, wow.

I don't sell my own land anymore.

Look at that view.

Yeah, I, I'm sorry. I, I— Don Thrasher reached out to me and he said, are you coming? And I realized, oh my goodness,

are you at the

Outlaws? That's how you know it's a good life, right? You don't even know days.

For sure. Oh, we can't hear you now, John.

Oh, that's okay. One second.

Are you

there?

Yeah, we got you now.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, are you at the, uh, are you at the Outlaws, uh, uh, property?

Yes, yes. The— I mean, the in-laws' property. My in-laws are not— my in-laws are not outlaws, contrary to popular belief. So,

uh, well, John, uh, thanks for joining us. Oh, and look, look, we have another, another land geek making his fashionably late appearance. What's up?

Look at us, we're all just fashionably late. At least these two.

You're at a lake, John? That's so cool.

I was late, but you know what? You made me look good because you were later than me, so by about 15 seconds.

Oh, that's not bad.

Well, it's good to see you guys.

Great in red. The first time I think I've ever, ever in 15 years seen you in red. And you know what? You should wear red more often.

Thank you, but there's still the black shirt underneath. It just got cold here, so I'm still wearing the uniform.

I love it.

That was a, that was a very suave entrance, Zano. Uh,

you like my ghosts for being late?

Oh yeah, look at the ghosts.

Oh,

nice, nice.

So fellas, tonight we're talking, uh, going from one deal a month to one deal a week and maybe even one deal a day down the road. So we did a little math just now, so Basically, the first step in this whole conversion is, you know, how do we go from 1 deal a month to 1 deal a week? We need inventory. So we talked about, you know, we need to acquire more than 4 properties a month. And if we're buying maybe 1 wholesale, 1 land arb, and then doing 1,000 mailings a month, that should give us the opportunity to buy probably 5 or 10 properties through mail as well. So I think the, the math tells us that if you want to scale— We gotta— sorry, sorry for the dog.

Concurring, that's all he's doing.

Yeah, he's concurring. Yeah, uh, we gotta ramp our mailers up a little bit, I think, to, to enable us to buy more properties at a deep discount. So that's the first step.

I think that—

any thoughts?

Force the funnel, you know, the more properties you have, you put pressure on that funnel, you squeeze out the result, you know. You definitely need to have properties. No doubt whatsoever. You can't build, um, to that level with just a few properties. So mailings have to be consistent, acquisitions, you know, the whole process has to be dialed in. All the little simple parts have to be just firing consistently.

And John, don't— wouldn't you agree, uh, that when you start, um, experiencing more frequent sales that there's kind of a level of inventory you need in order to experience that?

Yeah, I, I do, but I, I would say that there is a variety— it's more about variety of inventory at some point than it is about inventory itself. So, um, if you've got 50 properties but they're all the exact same thing Then, you know, that, like, that's great. You should, you know, you should have back inventory for whatever that product is. But ultimately, I think it's about being able to market, you know, a handful of things with consistency is ultimately what it's all about. So I'm not one of the, like, you have to have 50 people in your property people, or sorry, 50 properties in your inventory people. I think you can do it with a little bit of a, a little bit of a leaner inventory, but you need to have variety and you need to be able to keep things in stock.

I love it. I love it. Well, I think we covered that. So you got to do some math, right? And we got to boost our inventory and maybe boost the variety of our inventory. So that brings us to another thing that we can change to go from 1 deal a month to 1 deal a week. And, uh, Mike, it's really getting more eyeballs on your properties, right? Um, so we need lots of eyeballs on the property. So talk a little bit about what that might look like, uh, to get more leads.

Yeah, you need to be marketing consistently. The front— there's 2 mountains to climb in our business. One is the buying of properties, one is the selling of properties, and they both involve a similar process. On the buy side, lots of potential sellers are contacted through our outbound mailing, and then some of them respond and we purchase. And then when it comes down to marketing, we need to engage lots of potential buyers, right? People that— and then they'll reach out to us. So it's just going to come down to that outreach that we do. We can do it through paid land sites, free things like Facebook. And the one thing that we own, which, um, is very important— I remember Jeff Axton telling me way back then, Mark yelled at him because he didn't have a buyer's list. He's like, Mark just yelled at me. I don't have a buyer's list.

That sounds a lot like me, by the way.

It was like— so that— those are people that reach out to us that may not buy now, may have bought now, but either way have a likelihood of buying in the future. So we keep them engaged with our— uh, so I would say that's something you need to grow out of the gate, because if you don't want Mark Podolsky yelling at you, you must have a buyer's list.

Yeah, I think I've mellowed through the years. I think back in the day when Jeff—

You need to hold Mark back. Come on.

I haven't seen Mark yell forever.

Yeah, yeah, back in the day I could see it like, Jeff, you don't have buyers list.

I remember that day so clearly. Mark yelled at me. I'm like, what happened? What'd you do wrong, dude? I don't have a buyers list. What's a buyers list? That's the problem.

It's the one thing you own.

I love that. Well, and I think another, uh, marketing channel that you, you haven't talked about there, Zaino, are the neighbors. I think that's the most— it's one of the most overlooked buyers of property as well, are the neighbors. And we used to talk about neighbor letters all the time, you know, send out the neighbor letters, send out the neighbor letters. But you can create a system or a process in your business where you just reach out to all the adjacent neighbors Skip trace them and call them.

Business can become complex by our own hands because yes, it can be automated, yes, it can be delegated, but you need to do it first a few times, several times, dozens of times. And so we could get so hot and heavy into creating processes that we don't actually do the one thing that we need to do. So if you're out there and you're new to this, or if you've been doing it for a while, yeah, it's great to have a process, and you can because it's repetitive It's a repeating process. But don't let that get in the way of getting it done. Just doing it. And then fail forward, right? Oh, you did it again. Great. Well, then next week, maybe somebody else does it. But maybe as long as it gets done week by week, it has to happen.

Yeah, done is definitely better than perfect. However, John Burnett, do you think also that it's worthwhile to get a little bit better at marketing as well?

Yes, I do.

Tell me, tell me more. Tell me more.

I think that it's important.

Objection, leading question.

I know. I think that ultimately, I don't know, with marketing, every so often I've had this in my company where I'm like, man, sales are like really Like slowing down. And then I do just an audit on my marketing and you just find some clear things that are causing issues and you can tweak little things. And as you tweak that, then it has a really big impact on lead flow, right? So I think about it in terms of the funnel, right? And where it starts, if I'm posting ads, right? The first part of the funnel is, Are people seeing my ads? If people aren't seeing my ads, then they won't reach out to me because of the ads, right? And so you have to kind of play the algorithm of whatever, wherever it is you're posting that so that you can get, get your ads in front of people. And then it's a question of like, okay, of the people that are seeing my ads, how many are actually clicking into it? And a lot of that has to do with your image. Like, if you've got a picture there and, you know, I've got a lot of flat sagebrush lots, right? And you know what can look really sad and depressing? A flat sagebrush lot that where you— somebody stands up with a camera over their head and takes a picture, right? And it's just sad and gray, right? But you can, you know, sagebrush is beautiful. Right? When you look at it close up and throw a view in the background, like, it's really beautiful. And so you can have compelling pictures of your properties. You can even just tweak, you know, the saturation and the contrast and stuff like that to make those pictures more compelling. And I do that a lot. And that's been really helpful. So, like, you want— so first off, eyeballs. Are people actually seeing your ads? Second, are people clicking into your ads? That has to do with generally your price, Maybe your headline and your picture, right? And then after people click into your ads, do they actually want to talk to you? And that has to do with your ad copy and how you're actually presenting the property or giving people a reason. And so, like, those are things that I think are important to kind of understand and tweak because, you know, if you double any one of those factors, you're gonna double your leads, right? And so that's kind of the way I think about it.

You know, when I hear you talk about sagebrush, I think of Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand. You don't bring me flowers anymore. That's all I could think of when you're like, it's just sagebrush. You don't bring me flowers anymore. Sagebrush is beautiful.

It is beautiful. That's why I give my wife sagebrush every year for our anniversary. It's great.

Yeah, you're just going to be looking at it from the right angle and then it's—

yeah, dude,

buddy, I think you're muted.

I'm better now. Yeah, I'm just— now we will all think of that song whenever we see or hear about sagebrush, for sure.

Oh, and, and we have people in here saying that Mark AI clone is a little mean, like old Mark did. Is it cloning an old version of you, Mark?

Oh, okay, so the, the clone is a little mean. You have to ask it, why are you a little mean? And so we wanted to have a personality, but, um, it— yeah, you have to ask.

I think you should text the clone, I don't think a buyer's list is important, and see what—

Can we please, like, whenever they bring the Optimus robots to market, can we please just take one and put the Mark Podolsky clone in it and have it walk around our events?

Do you mail? No.

Oh, look

at this.

Yeah, I guess, I guess Mark AI told Kelly she was pretty much an idiot.

Oh no.

In the most loving way possible.

Yeah, right.

Oh no, we gotta tweak it. Kelly, I'll, I'll check out the, uh, the exchange on the back end.

And, uh, and Landgrind, is that, is that Shannon? Landgrind, she wants Mark yelling at her, keep her on her toes. So

we should just have it as an option. It's just a toggle button. Yelling Mark, we could do old Mark or new Mark. We could just pick one.

Just like turn the volume up.

Wow.

Yeah, Kelly, you're not the first person to say my clone was a little mean.

Uh, and Rowena is using, uh, Muse to review, uh, her ads, and, and Muse is a tough critic. So there you go. Um, John Burnett, I have to say, that was a very nice 5-minute lesson in marketing. Like, that was really great.

Oh, thank you.

I'll check out my check after this time because you said 5 minutes. What was that?

What was that, Mike?

That he spoke for too long because you said that was in 5 minutes. Like

Did I sound sarcastic? I was very genuine. It's like very genuine in my compliment.

I just want to know, is that really a lake behind him? John, the only way to prove it is jump in.

Just like he's been there before. That's where he played guitar on the dock, remember that?

Yeah, I know, but yeah, you gotta jump in that, that water.

Oh, I did play guitar. That's right.

Yeah, I'm like, uh, Mark, a little reminder for you from From Kelly.

Yeah, we're working on it, we're working on it. Mackenzie knows she's gonna get out all the slides, all the prompts.

I love our community, right? They hold us accountable. That's good.

Yeah, it's great.

All right, so we covered— we covered the math and we covered the marketing, right? Uh, Zano, there's another area where we can get better to do more deals. Can you complete me on this one?

Wait a minute. So we talked about acquiring property and we talked about selling property, and now you're asking—

No, we talked about marketing property. We didn't talk about selling property.

Oh, oh, I don't know where you're going, but there are other ways to sell. Are you talking about like the different methodologies, like wholesale versus retail versus land arm? Are you—

I mean, I think there are sales strategies, right, to sell land more quickly or to raise capital to buy more land. But there's also just the process of selling. Which sometimes we need to tweak and work on.

It's true. Um, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect, but you need to get ads out. If you sent out 100 letters to buy property, maybe you nailed it, you buy some property. But more likely, if you send out 100 a week over 4, 5, 6 weeks, you will buy 1 or 2 properties, right? Or more. So the same thing on the advertising. One ad isn't going to be the determination whether or not you sell property. It's putting out ads consistently over and over again. In the beginning, that's you. Yes, it can be automated, it can be delegated. Probably all of us here are doing that in an automation or delegation type of way. But in the beginning, it just has to be you. It has to get done.

Yes, for sure. And, and John Burnett, we, we spent some time at, uh, at the boot camp talking about how to improve sales just by working on sales. Touch on that for a sec.

How to do— how to improve sales by working on sales.

Yeah, we did. Remember, we did a little sales presentation. We talked about there's all sorts of different things that you can do as far as like speed to lead and having good conversations with people.

He's basically saying complete me, Scott, because Mike failed miserably.

Well, I agree with all of the things that Scott just said. So, but yeah, like speed to lead. So getting to your leads quickly. And then just, you know, it is a matter of persistence and also getting people on the phone. Like the, I think the single biggest, well, I don't know if it's the single biggest, but it's a big roadblock that people run up against is that moment where they have to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. Right? Whether you're acquiring property or selling property, because it's always like, well, what are they gonna do? What are they gonna say? Do I— I don't know what I'm doing. Like, you know, and I remember that, like, the first time I went to acquire property, like, you're kind of just saying, well, this is what I'm gonna do, right? And I just said the things that, you know, that Mark says, right? And then the same thing on the sales side, but You know, it's really important to get people on the phone. So, you need to talk to them, you know, quickly. You need to try to get to your leads quickly and you have to push for a call. If you just send them the stuff and then don't give them any reason to communicate with you, you're not gonna be selling a lot of land. You need to try to get people on the phone. It's really important.

Yeah, and to follow up with people. Right? Multiple times, have some type of follow-up process. I think, you know, think about how you can systematize this stuff. I look back at my experience and I think I became better at sales when I had like a CRM and a way to stay organized, a way to keep track of leads. So, so think about that. And, you know, think about how to have those quality sales conversations. Think about How to ask for the sale. Sometimes people are afraid to ask for the sale. Mike, we had a sales assistant once where you know he was kind of letting sales go instead of asking for the sale, right? And there needed to be a little bit of training with that as well. So, so yeah, I think all that stuff to you know will help us get better at sales. Mark, can you think of a time in the past where you made your sales process better, or maybe it wasn't working right and that was having an effect on things?

No, absolutely. And, you know, we still will have an issue with sales even today. So last week we were talking about our sales process and we were looking at Like, why aren't these properties selling? And we're looking at like the team, and the team is asking for too much of a down payment. And we're like, who came up with this? And we're like, oh well, they did because they make more money for the bigger down payment. And we're like, no, we need to move this off of inventory. And so it's, it's sort of a constant Thing. Now, back in the day when I was selling, I'm the greatest salesman ever, so I never had a problem. No, I'm kidding. No, no, but you know, but I remember like, um, it was always about the system, having a follow-up system. It was always in the follow-up. And I remember, you know, wanting the, the prospect, whoever it was, to be embarrassed because I was constantly following up. It was like, oh, sorry, sorry. Like, I— that's what I really— that's what I would— I didn't actually— at some point, I didn't care if they bought or sold. I just wanted them to feel so badly for not taking my calls and ghosting me. Because knowing, like, I'm gonna keep coming and keep coming and keep following— like, you said you're interested, still available. I know you're busy. And just, you know, but, you know, at that time, the minimum was like 7 times I would follow up, uh, as a minimum. So, um, not scalable at that point, but that's— I had to do what I had to do when I had a small inventory. Now that we have bigger inventory, we have a bigger team, and, and that, you know, it's all about that process and that system. But to your point, like, yeah, we have to constantly be tweaking it. It's like, why, why isn't this selling?

I love it. All right, uh, well, we have some other comments coming in. Uh, Crystal Deers is here. Crystal, she got the book and she's inspired. So,

all right,

welcome to the hive mind, Crystal.

Please welcome

Crystal.

I was waiting for a response from you. Gosh, he loves that term.

We just lost half our viewers every time he says hive mind.

People love that term. Awesome. See, I do have a question for the audience as well. Is there anything in your business That seems to be holding you back, seems to be holding you back from doing more deals. Let's talk about it.

I was hoping you're going to ask that. What's, uh, what's holding people back? What do they perceive?

And, uh, we'd be happy to chat about that. Um, all right, well, let's, uh, so, so Don Thrasher, uh, we gotta, we gotta move inventory. Uh, money loves motion, so it's all about momentum. But let's talk a little bit more about, uh, money now, because that is another thing, uh, that really helps us, I think, go from doing one deal a month to one deal a week. We need more money to buy more land, right? Or we need some capital strategies to, to, to acquire money or to, to boost sales. So, Mark Podolsky, you're like the best person to go to for this. I always love your talks about, you know, and some of it's even a mindset thing. Like, I'll never forget when you told me, because I didn't feel like I had any money to do this, Scott, there's so much money out there, like, go find it. And I'm like, what do you mean? And that's, that's part of it.

Yeah, a lot of it is, is a mindset. And for whatever reason, we do get hung up asking for, for stuff. For anything, right? Like, I, I mean, I remember just the other day, um, Lainey was like, hey, will you ask that person to go do X, Y, and Z? I was like, no, I'm not gonna bother them, I'll go do it myself. But that, like, that— if you take that and then, like, that little thing's uncomfortable for me, but imagine asking someone for money. And so for whatever reason, we all have like this emotional stuff with money. But money is just a tool. And so when we see it, it's just a tool. It's like, okay, the person that you're helping, that person, and so, and they're helping you. And so you basically want— and this is the trick— is you never want to ask directly for money because it's, it does get awkward.

Mm-hmm.

Almost in, in, you want to go sideways. You want to, you want to ask for advice. So I would go to Uncle Mike or Uncle John or Uncle Scott, and I said, hey, I'm, I've been running this land business. I've done this many deals. I'm doing really well, but I've kind of plateaued. And, you know, I'm, I'm kind of out of money now. I, I just want your advice. Like, you know, if, you know, if I offered investors, say, 10, 12%, How would you think I should structure it to an investor? Like, what would you— what would be, you know, like, what advice would you give me? And then they're like, wait, 10, 12%? How much are you looking for? Oh, Uncle Mike, I'm looking for $100K. Okay, $100K. Yeah, uh, you know, I could give you $50K. Okay, how would you structure it? And now, now we have a dialogue, and now we're on the same side for sure. Um, so that's how I would do it. But there's always other places to look besides Uncle Mike or Uncle John or Uncle Scott, right? We have money in our homes. Our— get a home equity line of credit, right? You can use credit cards. You can— if you have a stock portfolio, you can borrow from your stock portfolio. If you're using infinite banking concept from Wealth Without Wall Street, you can borrow from your, uh, life insurance policy. But there's just endless, endless ways to get money. There's Fund and Grow, and we have an affiliate link. You save money on that, you know, doing that. So there's, there's just so much money out there that it's just the mindset of like, okay, how am I going to do this? Instead of just stopping like, oh, I can't do it, I'm out of money. Like, no, we're all going to run out of money. I run out of money,

right?

How do I get more money?

Mark, talk to the Dave Ramsey folks out there because every once in a while we'll chat with somebody and, and, uh, you know, we'll, we'll talk, we'll have this very conversation. You know, what are some other ways that you can find money to invest in your land business? And some people are very debt averse, right? Uh, and, uh, they've spent years and years getting out of debt and the last thing they want to do is tap into some other people's funds or into their own equity to create capital or to bring capital to the table to grow a business.

Yeah, the Dave Ramsey people are great, uh, and I get it because if you, if you had a problem with— if you like, you had a serious problem with money, Dave Ramsey is great. And it'll get you out of trouble, and it'll come up that system, and it'll get you out of debt. But that's getting to a survival. If you want to survive, Dave Ramsey is great. But if you want real wealth, there's no other way to do it besides leverage. Everyone uses leverage. Robert Kiyosaki is a billionaire because he uses leverage. I mean, companies do it, people do it. You have to do it. It's leverage. Um, now that being said, you don't be— you're not irresponsible. You don't use over-leverage, but you have to use leverage, especially in real estate, especially in business. You want to use other people's money to grow. So if you're a Dave Ramsey person, you've got a hard, hard time with money in the past, and yeah, and you got You know, thousands of dollars in debt, don't borrow money to get a Starbucks Frappuccino. Get to that point where you're out of debt. But if you're going to start buying assets and investing, then there's just no other way to, to grow.

I always think about debt like, like fire, right? Like there's tremendous destructive power, right? So like fire can get out of control, it can burn down a forest, right? But also harnessed, it can power an internal combustion engine, right? You can do incredible things. And so I think it's important that when it comes to leverage and debt, that you're cautious, right? That you're spending it on things that can actually generate wealth for you. And like, to that end, you know, you don't want to necessarily— like, when I'm talking to somebody and they're looking to raise capital, like, you know, you don't want to raise capital for that one mailing campaign you're about to do, right? Or something like that. You know, if somebody is like, I'm going to raise capital, I'm going to send out 50,000 mailers. I'm like, stop, don't. Because, you know, we've all— and I actually presented on this at the summit, like, I've had mailer campaigns that didn't hit like the way I thought they would. And I had to kind of figure it out and get on the other side and get my pricing right. Right. And so, but when you invest in property and you're buying at 25 to 35 cents on the dollar and you're using leverage for that, that's leverage used appropriately and well, and that can really give you a substantial leg up.

Yeah, I like his answer better. It's like fire.

It's like fire. John Burnett, you need a campfire over there. The sun is—

I do need a campfire.

And Zeno, you're getting darker as well. You need a fire as well. I don't know what's going on over there. You got some sort of weird mood lighting going on or something.

Get the ghosts, they come up.

Oh, all right, all right. Uh, I I really enjoyed that, that conversation about using or finding money. So I think that's going to help some people. All right, cool. So a couple other things that we can use to, or that we can do to go from one deal a week to, or one deal a month to one deal a week. And I think these 2 kind of go hand in hand. But Mike Zaino, I think you should talk a little bit about— any idea?

You got systems?

No, we're gonna talk systems now because systems make us— well, I mean, you could talk wholesaling. That's another way to raise money for your land business. Yes. Talk about

that. Oh, that's true. That's how I paid off my debt. I bought small properties, sold them to other investors. double in money, sometimes more, sometimes less, but never would I get paid that hourly, I would always say. So, um, wholesaling is a great way to sort of build up capital.

I like the— oh, you're freezing on us.

No, I'm here.

Oh, you're here. Okay. Um, you're like the, the Dave Ramsey of land investing, kind of. Right. You used land investing,

right? Well, I did. I had debt and I had different credit cards, and I used like kind of a Ramsey model, paid the, you know, the most expensive ones off first. And but I did it $400, $500 property at a time. Once I knew other people would buy these from me, I didn't care if I bought it for $400 and I sold it, made $250, $300. Like, literally, it'd be like an hour of work. Who's gonna pay me that an hour? Like nobody. So I just kept doing it over and over again. So yeah, I used the Ramsey philosophy of unwinding my debt, and I used— but the land was the, was the, uh, vehicle that created the capital necessary to do that, so I could do it exponentially faster than I could on my own. Because on my own, I'd have a few hundred dollars here, but land, it's like boom, $200 here, $200 here, and I just kept firing at it. So I, I worked a little bit of both. And I— it worked out very well for me.

And this is, this is how we need to think of it, right, Maddie? Like, I had no debt, but now I do, but it'll be fine.

Well, it's different because if debt is in land that you own, that's a different—

I agree. Yeah.

Just owing somebody for the frivolous things that I had done, you know, to be honest.

Yeah, and I think, uh, you know, we talk to people all the time who maybe they're a little bit discouraged because they've bought $10,000 worth of, of property, right?

Right.

And they haven't had a sale in a month or two, and they're maybe kind of getting a little bit down, down on themselves. When, when I like to point out, hey, let's look at the, let's look at the gain here and not the gap. The gain is you may have spent $10,000 on a property But what's, what's the value of that portfolio? Is it $30,000 or $40,000?

Right.

You should feel good about that.

Yeah. You have an equity stake now. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, John Burnett, let's talk about, uh, let's talk about how, uh, as we grow our business with more mailers and we have more capital to buy land, uh, it gets a little bit harder to do things all by yourself. So, I think that's another main thing that helps us get to multiple deals a month and then eventually multiple deals a week is figuring out a way where we don't have to do it all ourselves. So, let's talk a little bit about delegation and maybe some systems to go along with the land business.

Yeah. So, I think that like it is important like Mike was saying that you kind of get to know each area of the business before you delegate. But delegation and automation are like, those massively unlock the potential for you to scale your business, right? If you can pull yourself out of just ad posting or, you know, or just having the conversations with the sellers, like all these different things, the more you can pull yourself out of that, the more you can start working on your business. And start perfecting that and getting that to perform in a really strong way. But I think strong systems are, are really important, right, in terms of, in terms of scaling your business. You should be able to kind of know what's going on. And then you need a team that can actually execute on that.

I love it. And Kelly does have a point here. You need to have money coming in for all of this stuff. Right. So that's where maybe a wholesaling strategy comes in, I think, for people that are new to this. You know, if you are able to buy 5 or 10 properties through a mailing, wholesale half of them, cover those operating expenses, uh, rinse and repeat and move on to the next deal. I think that's important.

Or you could sell your note.

Sell your note. Yep.

Oh, he's on mute.

Sorry.

You just threatened the dog.

Yeah, I threatened the dog and now my screen went wonky. Okay. All right. Awesome. Uh, so, okay. There's one other thing that I think you need, uh, to, to, to build, build sales and get to the point where you're, you're selling more frequently. And, uh, we have the mindset master on, on the call here. Mike Zaino had 3 amazing modules on mindset at Dirt Rich Summit.

I'd argue one, but go ahead.

Oh, come on.

Oh, come on,

dude. There were nuggets.

For those of you that, that, that saw Mike's mindset at Dirt Rich Summit, give him some love in the chat.

Well, you know, the first days, you know, next year it's going to be completely just sort of Pointers and just from the heart, because that's how I operate better. So the 3rd day I finally caught up with that. Thank you, I do appreciate that. But, uh, you know, I think it's— I feel like I have to express myself, and I can do that when I'm in the moment, not looking at prompters, you know. So I'm gonna get— I'm gonna get better. It's a— it's a good problem, right, to be able to help people more by developing my— developing my ability to convey the power of this business to them. I think that's super powerful.

Well, Mike, can I put you on the spot? So what are some mindset, uh, what are some pieces of advice you could give people, uh, regarding mindset when they're trying to go from one deal a month to, to one deal a week or more?

Yeah, you know, I think just believing it's possible. The reality is that we can block our own growth. We can sort of get in our own way. Um, you know, there's nothing special about I'm sorry, the four of us here, other than we follow a proven process over and over again. We do the things that, if done correctly and repetitively, result in land being sold at a high, high level. So mimic that, right? Just believe it does work, right? Does it— is it out of the gate? No, because all of us have had to tweak our processes, uh, tweak out the way that we that we actually, uh, make this happen. But once you dial it in, it's a— you see it all the time. People say, I haven't sold a property, haven't sold a property. They sold 4 or 5. It's not like they sold 4 or 5 in a day or two. It's all the work they put into getting themselves to the point where they can dial the process in to get there, right? So just, just believe it's possible. Believe that you can do it. Unless you think we're like completely making this up, which we're not. Like, we're just completely average people doing a very simple thing over and over again and then learning how to automate and delegate. If you can believe that, then you can do it too, right? Because there's nothing, nothing overly complex or technical here. Just dial in how you make that sale and then do more of it. And how can that be done in a system, in a workflow? So just believe it. You know, you have to believe it's possible. We're not here saying things that are crazy. We don't, you know, out of the norm. We sell property every week. If you put it together, every day we're selling property, literally. So you can do this too.

Awesome. And Mark, Mark Podolsky— John, you're like fading away. It's like—

I know, I'm just a floating head at this point.

Yeah, you are. Uh, Mark, what about setting, uh, what about setting loftier goals? Is that— do you think that's important with, with mindset as well?

I, I absolutely do. And I think that setting really big— what are they called— the BHAGs, big hairy audacious goals, is exciting. And 2x is not that exciting. 10x, 100x— what's the, what's the, uh, cliché? I know John's gonna say it better, but, you know, shoot for the stars and you land on the moon. Kind of thing. But you have to, like— but to Mike's point, you have to believe it, and you have to embrace the suck because you're a beginner. And so you have to get your reps in as well. And then, and then it happens, which is what Mike was alluding to. I think John did a module like you're 5 feet from gold. And it's just getting those reps in and digging and digging and digging, and then All of a sudden you're right there. But oftentimes as adults, we, we quit too early for whatever reason. We just think, oh, this isn't for me, or it's too hard, or I don't know, I don't know why, you know. But whatever the reason is, and— but you're 5 feet from goal.

Oh, I love that.

I like it.

John, any last words on mindset? Any pieces of advice before we get to some questions with the audience?

I mean, I think that Mark kind of nailed it. Like, I think that ultimately you have to persist, you have to keep on going, right? And if you do, you succeed. And if you stop, then you won't, right? And so that's really important. And it is the kind of a thing where sometimes, I don't know, like everything, I don't know, everything that you do matters and is worthwhile, right? That ad that you post that didn't get the leads that you wanted, like the conversation with the buyer or the seller that didn't go the way you wanted it to, every single one of those is getting you closer to your goal, right? And there's a number of those that you have to get through to get to your goal. Right? But if you, if you keep at it, if you persist, like, you will succeed.

I love it. Comments. I love Don Thrasher's comment. Mike is ghosting

us.

That's great. Uh, we have a question. Uh, where did it go? Oh yeah, from Maddie. Who wants to take this one, fellas? What's the difference between selling the note and selling it wholesale?

Mark, get more money selling it, uh, the note.

Or Mike?

Yeah, well, I think the difference is one is a cash— well, both you're getting cash. So the difference is, okay, let's just take Mike. Like, he likes to wholesale, so he'll buy a bunch of properties for like $500 and he'll sell them for $800. That's wholesaling, gets that, that $300 spread. But let's say that you're doing it the traditional way because you want— you don't want cash. Like, I don't want cash, I want cash flow. So I'm selling all these properties on easy terms. I'm getting $299 down, I'm getting $299 a month. And then I wake up one day, I'm like, oh my gosh, I got a $100,000 portfolio here and it's throwing, you know, it's, it's, it's bringing whatever, $2,000 a month in passive income. Which I loved. But then Mike's like, hey, I'm gonna wholesale this $50,000 portfolio to you. And I don't have $50,000, but I got a $100,000 note portfolio. So I'm like, oh, okay, John, will you buy my note portfolio? 50 cents on the dollar. And John's like, oh yeah, look at that yield. I'll do it. And if there's a default, no problem. I resell it and I make my even more money. So John gives you 50 grand, you take that 50 grand, you buy another big tranche of land, and then you, you know, you take that and you create $200,000 or $300,000 or $400,000, whatever it might be, of land notes again, throwing off this passive income. And you can keep doing that. So it's a— it's an interesting strategy if you are debt-averse and you don't want to go out and get outside money. You can definitely use that, that note portfolio to do that. And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I think, I think emotionally it's tougher to sell a note than it is the wholesale because we like that passive income. But the math maths, Maddie. Oh, I, I, by the way, if it wasn't Maddie, I would be way nicer. Like, if that was Kelly, I'd be like, and that's it, Kelly. But because, like, I, like, Maddie and I, uh, Maddie's got thick skin.

Yeah,

no, she was great in the summit though.

She's awesome.

Yeah. Her and Kelly were right in front. I was hazing both of them.

Yeah. I think also, like, if you do the math, like, so if I've got my little terms price calculator out, so if I had, let's say I bought a property at, let's say we did our 25 cents on a dollar, right? And it's a property that retails for $5,000. So I'm buying that for $1,000. $650, right? If I were to sell that property on terms, if it was a $5,000 property, for me, I would sell that at right around— so it'd be $101 for 60 months, right, is what I would do. So that comes to $6,650. Well, and I would do a $349 down payment. So that gets us to $6,659, right? Now, if I do the $349 down and the doc fee— sorry, this is getting very complicated.

We should have the financial calculator out.

Right. So then I would get $599 down. And then let's say I let that note season for 3 months. That gives me another $303. And then there are, let's see, 100. So there would be 57 months. Wow, this is getting extremely complicated. Times 101. So, uh, that's $5,000. Okay, so basically if I sell the notes, this is a lot of money.

It's a lot of money.

Then I get, uh, normally, okay, so I would get, um, just, just shy of $4,000 is what I would get out of that entire sale. Whereas if I were to wholesale that, I would only get $2,500. So you get a lot more money. So that's what I want to say. You get more money if you do it. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you, John.

That was really good. You're welcome.

It was, it was very confusing.

John's done. Whoa. A lot of money. A lot of money.

A lot of money.

Well, uh, here's another mindset tip from Rowena: I think I can, I think I can. And that's true. If you think you can, you can. If you think you can, you, you can. If you think you can't, you won't. Right? Right. So, yeah, and that's what— that's, you know, pretty much what John was saying a few, a few minutes ago. So, well, fellas, uh, this was fun. Any other questions? Uh, for us tonight, uh, so we can help you go from one deal a month to one deal a week. Uh,

one deal a minute.

Yeah.

One deal a second.

Oh, I mean, let's set some lofty goals here, right? We could do the numbers on that.

John made it today, 100%. John made the day. So whatever you did, John, worked.

Oh.

Who said that?

I, I mean, I just turned into a silhouette. I'm just a floating head.

She loved your soliloquy. It was great.

Oh, that's amazing.

The floating head soliloquy.

Where are the sweatsuits? Although, Mark, you've got a quasi sweatsuit on right now.

Yeah, yeah, I've got not quite a sweatsuit going on, but let's

bring it back full circle, Mark. Crush it in red.

Thank you. All right, so, so I was asking Scott, uh, well, it's all about me, by the way. Longer hair or shorter hair? Should I go back to the short

hair?

Yeah, I think, uh, for everybody that likes, uh, the short hair on Mark, put a 1 in the chat. For everybody that likes the longer hair on Mark, put a 2 in the chat.

I, I still think you should do full Kramer, like just go as high as humanly possible.

Yeah, I'm getting used to it. This is the longest my hair's ever been in my life.

What's a one and what's a two? Because I'm getting one, two.

One is for short, two is for long.

Oh, two. And, uh, all day long.

I, I'm partial to the, to the shorter hair with Mark. I don't know. I,

I like the match.

Everyone likes long.

Yeah,

yeah. I'm glad I asked. I've been very insecure about it.

Oh, I got a one there, child.

Oh, but Charles, Charles is shorter.

Overwhelming majority of folks like Charles and

Tony are stuck at one. Everybody

else, and I'm stuck at one too, so I don't know.

Yeah, well, there you go.

Let's let's keep it practical here. Two is fine. One is less maintenance. I mean, that's true.

Matty's three. Matty's funny. Three. This is fun. Are you back? Mullet.

The three. Yeah, mullet.

This is Kid Rock.

Oh man.

Oh.

All right, guys. Well, this was fun. Uh, next week, uh, we might do a student spotlight. We were talking about that, so, uh, could be fun to do. We'll see what we can come up with. And if not, I'm sure we'll have another fun-filled topic. But fellas, thanks for the call. This was fun.

Pleasure.

Thank you, guys.

We'll see you, uh, to see you next week.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.